


One at my side

by SkyEventide



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Bittersweet, Grief/Mourning, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Marjolaine (mentioned), Marjolaine/Leliana (implied), Multi, Mysterious Past, Nostalgia, Scars, Silas (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 09:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20374180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyEventide/pseuds/SkyEventide
Summary: Tug is dead, a victim of Marjolaine's fateful betrayal. Sketch thinks back on their relationship, their complicated identities, and learns to mourn.





	One at my side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).

> "Atrast tunsha, salroka." It translates roughly to "may you find your way in the dark, my friend". But salroka means, more literally, one at my side.

When we entered the chantry, I first looked for the side doors. The ways out.

There was a small door on the left side and, as we proceeded towards the rooms at the bottom of the building, another small door that led, from the antechamber to the Revered Mother’s studio, to the sacristy.

I’d dropped my staff in an alley, set it down behind mouldy crates. That’s why I’d always sympathised with the Collective’s work. There were those little places scattered here and there, and you’d know them to be mostly safe, if you were meant to know.

I really fucking needed that, right then. A little safe place.

The chantry, with its templars standing guard and its mothers and sisters, its thick Fereldan walls, was not that. I was a sore spot, and I wanted out, as soon as possible.

Once Mother Dorothea and I had placed Leliana on a bed, I would leave, that was the plan: I would leave right after.

I didn’t.

It wasn’t just because I was tired, wounded, and malnourished, and not just because Leliana had gotten me out of the dungeon and leaving her there would have been a shitty move, even for my survival instincts; it was, maybe primarily, that the moment I sat down on a bed of my own, inside one of the sturdy rooms usually reserved to pilgrims, I felt completely hollowed out.

I looked ahead at the small statue of Andraste, carved in wood and placed in a nook, a useless idol. I reached, then, at my waist, where I’d tied Tug’s axe.

Laying it over my exhausted legs, resting on my open palm, I traced the curve of its handle, caressed it. I reached the spot where there used to be a golden disc, pulled away with pliers after our capture, the wood splintered around its old encasing. Taken away, likely sold.

That piece was pulled away from my very self.

I covered my eyes, bent over myself, and cried my damn heart out. Only, when tears were at last dried out by sheer weariness, I found no catharsis.

Just sleep.

*

I knew him best whenever I stole a few moments of our time to draw him.

I used books, scraps of paper, and sticks of graphite, scribbling down his figure; after his death I went through all my remaining sketches. Yes, yes – Sketch, who does sketches. Sketch’s book. I’m proud of the pun, admittedly.

In her last letter, Leliana told me that my name is disarming and awkward. She’s not wrong, it was always meant to be.

But I did sketch what I liked.

One of my first drawings was of him pulling a silk handkerchief out of a pocket.

« Feels like I caught a cold », he said. « Can’t kill a damn thing with a running nose. »

The logic of it escaped me, until I saw him kill a target with his axe and then pause by the murder, sniff noisily, and produce the handkerchief. He blew his nose and threw the results over the corpse.

I made a sound of disgust.

But it was jarring, wasn’t it, that a dwarf who only cared to ask about the when and where to get a job done would blow his nose with pretty squares of silk, embroidered with the names of previous owners. I always noticed the jarring details, so I drew it, the face half hidden by the kerchief.

I didn’t have his traits down all that well yet. Those first faces are inaccurate memories. But I’d learn the right lines, I’d learn them all by heart.

Tug noticed me, once.

He wasn’t the sort to pry, so he’d never asked what I did with my books, but he noticed his own face.

« You’re drawing me? », he asked.

« Uh, you could say that. »

He leaned in, narrowing his eyes. « That really looks like me. Not sure I want my face out there that way. »

« If _these _drawings ever end up in someone else’s hands… », I fidgeted, the idea making me want to stand up at once, « that would just mean that I’m dead or in shackles. Probably better dead. And anyway, templars don’t care about dwarves. »

« _Bards_ do. »

I pressed my lips together. There were more reasons than his face to my extreme unwillingness to let go of my scribbles – I was sure there were still people, out there, who could read them. « So… You mind a lot? I can erase it or something. »

Tug sat next to me, my book was by then closed. « Nah », he said. « Just make sure you keep that stuff to yourself. »

And I did.

*

That first night in the Chantry, I struggled to fall asleep.

Of the many places I’d slept in while working for Marjolaine, some of them had been silky smooth, literally so. Others, let’s just say that sleeping in a ditch would have been just the same. But none of them had been a Chantry.

Still, though I was a light sleeper, I’d never been a picky one. It was the exhaustion and the apprehension that kept me awake, staring at the ceiling of my room, small enough to uncomfortably remind me of a cell.

It was the pain that I kept all around me; it attracted whispers.

The Fade welcomed me with nightmares.

I slept without rest, with the shapes of the week of imprisonment plaguing me, and woke up early. The Chantry was not silent, and I jumped out of my bed, bare feet on the cold floor. I breathed in, breathed out, then left the cell.

The hum of the Chant of Light reached me in the cloister. I should leave, I thought. I _knew_ as much.

*

When Leliana first introduced us to Marjolaine, the older woman looked and felt like a bard should. The two of them had known each other for a while, and though I outwardly voiced some concerns about working as spy for the Orlesian nobility, Marjolaine still meant money, a modicum of protection, and, most importantly, access to places I couldn’t reach before then. She and Leliana left for a mansion, Tug and I got a room in a tavern. I felt like, for the first time, Tug had a very legitimate point in wanting fresh linens always with him.

All the armour pieces he wore, his weapons, the axe and the small emergency blades, none of them ended up on his nice stolen sheets. All on the floor.

Let’s say that communal bathing was not unknown to me, and leave it at that, so, if I looked away, it was just because of some sense of politeness. I looked at the single light in the room, burning yellow.

« Leliana walked after the new employer like a puppy », he commented, as if bemused.

« Looks like Marjolaine is teaching her all the ropes. »

« Yeah, teaching her the ropes… Just keep telling yourself that. »

I made a noise, a touch uninterested. Frankly, I didn’t like it, but I never like anything at first glance.

Then, Tug called me. « Hey. »

« What? »

« Didn’t think you’d be prudish. »

I turned slightly, my lips pressed together, my humour dry. « Hey, I’m just giving you privacy. I can stare at you, if you prefer it. »

Tug was plunging a towel in the water basin made of cheap and bumpy metal, then dragging it down his arms and chest. I noted the scars first.

« Don’t mind if you do », he drawled, a touch of teasing irony in the throaty timbre of his voice. I think I blanched slightly, no other reason why he should have chuckled with such satisfaction.

*

Of the three of us… that is, between me, Leliana, and Silas, who’d escaped the prison too, I was certainly the one in better shape. Leliana had fought injured – her gargled sound of shock from when Marjolaine stabbed her still a clear memory. As for Silas, he wasn’t wounded, maybe just a little battered, but he’d been imprisoned down there for weeks, and he was definitely tired.

A petty, pained, grieving part of me wondered why he couldn’t be the first to go under the torturers’ hands, instead. I looked at him as he sat on a Chantry bench, by a lit chandelier, wrapped in rough Fereldan linens.

Thin for malnutrition (and I know a fair deal about how people look like when they’re malnourished), but trained in fighting, he’d seemed an honest man back in the dungeon. The sort of honest man who has few secrets and for that ends up in dungeons to begin with. It was unfair of me to wish he’d died instead, but fuck, I couldn’t help it.

When he noticed me, his face lit up with tired recognition. « Ah. Good to see you. »

I approached, antsy in my steps. « Yeah », I answered, exhaling.

He sighed, as if he found understanding in my exhaustion. « At least the Chant is peaceful. »

I didn’t answer, my lips pursing slightly, beyond my control.

Silas leaned a little towards me, his voice lowering. « Hey… don’t worry. You and your friend helped me out of there, and I can’t thank you enough for that. I couldn’t have taken on all of Raleigh’s soldiers on my own. So, don’t worry about… » And he moved a hand slightly, his fingers waving in a funny imitation of what, I guessed, was supposed to be spellcasting.

I swallowed, and Silas continued, his voice steady and low. « So thank you », he repeated. « I hope the young woman gets better soon. And, well… »

He fell silent. A gaping, yawning Maker-damned silence.

I raised a hand and gestured to dismiss whatever came next, the apology, or the condolences. « It’s fine », I said, aiming for light-hearted and only managing high-pitched. « I was just going to have a walk. »

Again, I thought about leaving, but turned instead, to go check on Leliana.

*

Bodies tell tales.

Like clothing, like mannerism, like names.

The tale of Tug’s body was one of violence and things he never spoke about.

There was his strangely large casteless tattoo on his cheek, but there was another one, on his torso, just under his pectoral over the ribcage. It looked like a symbol of those that are used by nobility, or by societies, but it didn’t have a dwarven look; just like, for that matter, his axe.

I rubbed my thumb around it, one night when Marjolaine had gotten us all a fancy room – for once the toiletries we were using weren’t stolen (but they were going to be by the time we left, I could bet on it.)

Tug raised an arm and glanced at his tattoo. « Carta stuff », he said, dismissively.

« It looks nice. »

« You like it? You wouldn’t like as much going through what it takes to get it, though. »

« If you’re presuming that I’m not some sort of underworld masochist, you’re presuming _very _correctly. »

He snorted, his arm falling down again, his head sinking on the pillow, and I didn’t pursue it. It’s not like I couldn’t tell a lie for the sake of privacy from one for the sake of malice. I knew, also, that there were things he didn’t give out to Marjolaine (or Leliana, for that matter), just like she so rarely gave any information to _us_. If he didn’t want to give out some of those things to me either, well, I wouldn’t begrudge him that.

I knew his scars well too, one of them more intimately than the others.

It sliced his chest from the collarbone to the shoulder muscle. Another bard, that one, one who hit deep. It was the only time I saw Tug lose his grip on the battle-axe, the weapon clanking on the marble floor of the mansion.

I reached for the spirits of the Fade, that they could knit the flesh back together – it didn’t work. He was a dwarf, the resistance to magic getting in the way of my healing.

It was a narrow escape.

I spent days patching up that wound, nagging the bone with little spells, stitching the folds of the skin. Tug accused me of fussing, in that way of his, all matter of fact.

« Tell me you don’t need it and I’ll leave you alone right this instant », I replied. He said nothing.

The slightly ragged edges of it had remained to record the difficult healing process and my commitment to it. Lying in bed that night, I ran my fingers over his shoulder, feeling the texture of the scar.

I didn’t do it often: the tale of a body sometimes is too honest, and therefore private; unlike Leliana’s stories about our entirely fabricated adventures, it cannot entirely lie. Likewise, he wasn’t in the habit of touching the smaller, easily hidden scars on mine.

If I touched that one it was only because it reminded me that, this one time, I’d been able to save him.

*

Once, I met Leliana again when the Revered Mother Dorothea who’d saved us had already become Divine Justinia.

Seeing Leliana in Chantry clothing was nothing short of unsettling and the first thing I did when I saw her all wrapped up in sunburst symbols was twist my mouth with some displeasure. « You know I don’t like all the stories you keep telling about us, right? They got me running all over Kirkwall with a… an array of people after me, wanting me dead. »

Leliana chuckled, the sound slightly apologetic. « You know what my trade is. »

« The truth », I remarked with some emphasis, « would be better. »

And she smiled. « The truth is too dear to me, now more than ever. And I don’t get to tell that many stories anymore. »

« Right. » I took a deep breath and sighed it out. I’ve always been really good at fleeing, haven’t I?

We talked about what she’d come to do in the Free Marches. To an extent, that is. She worked for the Divine, now, and I thought she looked different but also somewhat the same.

She’d long lost the innocence of the thrill, of the _game_. I guess she’d found the Maker in its stead, and the Maker had given her a gravity, a surety of the justness of her actions… I didn’t blame her for it, despite her allegiances. I’d lost and found causes all the same.

But she was still enamoured, I thought. Not in the same way she was with Marjolaine, void no. But in some way, maybe of her role, maybe of Justinia. So I knew that, out of that loyalty, some things she just wouldn’t say.

Nor would I, really. Leliana was Leliana, but the Mage Collective wouldn’t have liked me giving out information to an agent of the Divine, and all else I ever did was mine to keep.

In any case, we hadn’t met up to talk about her job, or my complaints (though my complaints were _many_, and _grievous_).

It’d been a while since the last time we’d spoken in person, and it was an anniversary.

We sat on the sand of the coast, overlooking the Waking Sea, towards Ferelden; she eventually pulled out a bottle and three dainty cups. She filled them with the thick plum brandy of Antiva and we drank and spoke, drank and spoke, drank and spoke, and I let the alcohol sink into me like a stone.

Eventually, the bottle almost empty and my chest frankly just as empty of chatter, she lifted the cup she’d set to the side.

« I do this every year », she said. Then she poured its contents onto the ground. « Atrast tunsha, salroka. »

I closed my eyes, the weight of the axe I rarely used hanging from my belt, as present as the absence, both comfort and reminder.

An elven apostate ought to keep his friends very close.

And I did.

**Author's Note:**

> So many layers to these two. I tried to work with the WoT2 implication that Tug has something to do with the Titans and/or Kal-Sharok, without delving into it entirely, and also tried to leave Sketch's past hinted at and half mysterious despite the first person.
> 
> Leliana implies he is an agent of "old empire" and an ex slave, and perhaps she believes he was an agent of Tevinter, though it seems more likely that he's an agent of Fen'harel. I honestly couldn't pick between ex slave and ex circle mage background, so I left it up to interpretation.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
